


Vigil Strange I Kept

by whitmans_kiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, Chronic Illness, Community: rs_games, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Family, M/M, Post-Series, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:19:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitmans_kiss/pseuds/whitmans_kiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus' lycanthropy has caused his body to seriously deteriorate over the years due to the constant stress of the transformations, and by his fifty-sixth birthday, it's certain that he won't live to finish out the year. However, a cure has recently been discovered - but what if the cure is just as bad as the disease?</p>
<p>(Written Summer 2010.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil Strange I Kept

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the R/S Games 2010, Team AU, Prompt [12](http://rs-games.livejournal.com/81350.html#cutid1). Originally posted [here](http://rs-games.livejournal.com/95413.html) on LiveJournal.
> 
> My infinite, heartfelt thanks goes to [ceredwensirius](http://ceredwensirius.livejournal.com/), who helped shape this story and give our boys life. You're wonderful, darling, and I hope you enjoy. Thank you also to the speedy beta by remuslives23, for which I am grateful, and thanks also to [toujours_nigel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel). Title from Walt Whitman's poem "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night."

On his fifty-sixth birthday, Remus Lupin wakes to a dull headache. _Damn._

Rolling over, he ignores the way the sheets twist around his feet so that he can twist himself closer to the still-sleeping Sirius next to him, letting out a breath as an arm reflexively slips under the blankets and over his shoulders.

Everything is still for a moment; everything’s quiet, the breathing in the room and the birds outside – damn wrens – and the muffle of the dust filtering in through the window and the curtains thumping against the wall as they fall from their hook and the slow tick of seconds in his head (the clock long charmed silent) because if that bloody wren didn’t stop chirping Merlin help him he’d get his wand and –

A grunt from Sirius breaks the silence.

“M’ng.”

“Morning.”

“Yrfeeterinmsheets.”

“Pardon?”

Another grunt.

“Couldn’t quite catch that.”

“Fuck.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“Well. S’aproblem, that.”

And with that, Remus’ mouth curls into a smile because he knows Sirius has opened his eyes, and he doesn’t need to open his own to know the expression: sleep-soggy and beautiful, chin too rough and breath too sour to quite enjoy kissing just yet, the faint crust of dreams around the creases of his eyes causing the eyelashes to catch and stick at the edges. This is the only time, Remus thinks, that it is possible for Sirius to look entirely innocent, even with a modest lechery coating every word, too early in the morning on his birthday.

“ _Moon_ -y.”

Remus smiles further, eyes still closed.

“I’m asleep. It’s my birthday. I’m having a lie-in.”

“You’re not asleep.” A small shuffle; a toenail scratches Remus’ ankle as a leg wedges itself between his calves and an index finger pokes out from underneath the blankets to brush hair from his forehead, like a child, tracing along his eyebrows and down the ridge of his nose.

“I think it’s rather obvious that I am. Like the dead.”

The reaction is almost instantaneous, the way the finger drops from his face like a stone and Sirius’ eyes shut as quickly as Remus opens his.

“Sirius – you know I didn’t mean...”

The wren outside is still warbling and has obviously acquired a megaphone in the past few minutes for how very loud the song is ringing in Remus’ ears, and he’s serious about his bloody wand because honestly it's not quite half six yet...

“It’s your birthday, Remus. Not on your birthday. Your present to me – not today.”

“I’m sorry.”

The arm around him pulls him closer, and the leg between his calves works up to his thighs, bunching his pyjamas somewhere around his knees. Sirius deigns to open his eyes again and fixes them squarely on Remus’ nose.

“Did you know,” he asks Remus, “how very much I love you?”

“Think I might have some idea, yeah.” Remus takes a breath and the hand returns to his face, the pad of Sirius’ finger resting lightly on his nose.

“What?” He blinks. “M’too old to have spots, and besides, it’s rude to point them out – ”

“You’re _beautiful_ , Moony.”

“Hush. You’re half blind, anyway.”

“I’ll remind you that I’m not the one needing specs to read menus. And Teddy won’t be awake for three more hours at the least, which means _I have_ three more hours to look at you, bloody gorgeous at forty-four, you are.”

“I’m fifty-six, love.”

“Forty-four. I figure – you hit fifty; we start counting backwards.”

Remus lets out a small laugh; his head is throbbing. “Is that so?”

“I say it is.” The way he says it, Remus thinks, is as though he might be forty-four forever, not aging – that is, aging backwards, Sirius never having to acknowledge that every full moon that passes, the stress of living in a body that can’t handle the strain of transformations is taking its sharp toll.

“Then so it must be.” The finger on his nose skims down his jaw and neck, searching under the blankets for his hand, drawing it up and around Sirius’ waist. After a few sorry attempts by Sirius to compose a birthday sonnet, they untwist themselves ("the loo, Moony, is more important than your tender embrace; how I hate to bruise your fragile eg– o– oy, my bladder is full and you’ll budge or I’ll empty it here, now there’s a good fellow") and retwine their limbs to doze, Remus’ quiet snores wake them both at nine for breakfast.

Thirty minutes, three kisses, two showers, and one groaning, defiantly sleepy turquoise-and-tousle-haired teenaged son later, the Lupin-Black collective finds itself around the breakfast table.

A small, somewhat elderly house elf with a sweet face putters around the stove with a spatula, casting pointed looks at the lot of them. “Lolly waited an extra hour to be putting the sausages on, making sure they be warm and fresh for her lazyhead boys, sleeping in so late – even if it is being Master Remus’ birthday,” she grumbles.

“Seeing as it is my birthday, Lolly,” Remus says warmly to her, “I’m sure to be terribly tired after dinner with all the celebrating I’m to do today, so Sirius tells me. If you could have a bath drawn up for me this evening a little earlier than usual, I’d much appreciate it.”

Teddy, seated across from him, stops mid-reach for a pastry and squishes his eyes shut. “Aw, come on Da, not at breakfast – I want to actually _want_ my sausages when they’re ready, thanks?”

Sirius grins wickedly, bringing a spoon to his mouth in a way that has most definitely been practiced on – well, not spoons. “Your Da never said anything about specifics – though there had better be cake involved in the celebration, because think of what a waste all that frosting would be, otherwi—”

“Pa _pa!_ Honestly!”

Lolly shrieks something about the mess Master Teddy makes when the pastry hits the floor, Sirius barks a laugh around mouthfuls of yoghurt, and Remus leans back in his chair and smiles.

*

He’d have to thank Lolly, the dear elf, for knowing exactly what needed to be done with minimal instruction. Perhaps she’d been with them too long, or perhaps she could somehow see inside minds – a somewhat unnerving prospect, knowing her, though not altogether unreasonable, considering – for when Remus had asked her if she could please draw a bath for him after dinner, she’d executed every unspoken detail to perfection.

The master bath is something of an indulgent affair, with a high ceiling and intricate stonework, and it had taken the better part of two years after they’d moved into the manor house ("being an heir, dear Moony, means I can live anywhere I damn well please, seeing as the Blacks own near half the country") for ‘hygiene’ and ‘luxury’ to accommodate themselves in the same space in Remus’ mind. There is a large, partially open shower in the rear of the space, with small stone bench installed some six or seven years prior so that Remus didn't have to stand for any great length of time without his cane, and in the other corner is the toilet, half-hidden by a low wall. A wide, black granite counter with two sinks and storage beneath fills up one of the walls, with a mirror just above running the length of the counter.

But by far the masterpiece of the room is a large porcelain tub with clawed brass feet and brass taps, the exposed pipes for the plumbing intent on feeding the monster with steaming hot water. Lolly had drawn the bath and set up a stool with soap and fresh flannels, and if the tub seems quite bigger than its usual behemoth state it is because she had used her brand of magic to enlarge it enough to possibly fit two grown men.

Remus gives a small smile at her impertinence.

The stone is cold on his bare feet, and he leans his cane against the counter as he moves to unbuckle his belt, not entirely surprised when a second pair of hands skims across his waist, reaching around to do it for him, a mouth on his neck and eyes turned up to meet his in the mirror.

Sirius is half naked, shirt previously discarded in the hamper by the door. The only reason, Remus knows, that Sirius isn’t quite nude already is because of how much Remus likes the satisfaction of pulling at the belt, the pinch of the leather in his hands before the catch of the zipper on his fingers, the way the jeans ease down Sirius’ legs and crumple at his feet, exposing him enough – but not entirely, not yet, because then Remus likes to dip his hands down elastic and curve his palms around Sirius’ arse – not like he hasn’t done it a hundred times before through the pockets.

When they were younger, such rituals took too much bloody _time_ , because who the fuck cared about belts and zips and elastic when all you really cared about was the _fuck_. They’d push and push until they collapsed breathless into one another, too caught up with the need to feel to recognize the need for touch. They hadn’t the time, then; there were people dying outside, and inside they had been dying too, using sex as the reason they could never breathe. And then James and Lily had died, and the world ended twice over in war.

As Sirius’ hands work off Remus’ trousers, flick down the buttons on his shirt, tug a little at his undershirt, uncovering more of him, Remus closes his eyes against the mirror and turns his head to the side, not wanting to see how now he is dying.

His skin, sick-pale, scar-torn and mended, had smoothed in the twenty-odd years it had gone without damage, but hangs somewhat loose around his chest and waist where he had recently lost even more weight – his appetite depressed. If one were to look very closely, there is a tremor in his right arm from constant overuse in walking with his cane, and every joint seems exaggerated, as though he were once again a gangly teenager caught up in growing instead of an aging werewolf watching his body deteriorate from constant transformations.

But Sirius – and Remus half-opens his eyes again just to look at him, because, _gods_ – is fifty-four and clearly still in his prime. The faded prison tattoos down his chest and arms emphasize that beneath them is still muscle, not fresh as in youth, but something built powerfully and strong to weather the decades of his life and still remain exquisite, something innately masculine in the planes of his body.

They haven’t tried anything like this since December, when Sirius’ birthday came around, and September just before that, and Remus found both times he couldn’t come, and they both know it’s the new medication he’d switched to the last week of August and can’t afford to stop taking now.

Remus, naked now, steps out of the puddle of his trousers and turns to face Sirius, the hands on his hips taking care to support him as he cares about belts and zips and elastic, because now they have nothing but time, and Remus is going to take what little he has left.

And they kiss like they’ve never met each other before, like they know everything about each other; they kiss until Remus’ bad leg starts shaking so badly he can’t stand, and when the kissing stops and they’re falling, Sirius grips Remus to him and helps settle him in the bath.

They sit tandem, Remus’ back pressed to Sirius’ chest in a way that isn’t so much a fit out of habit as it is an erosion of muscle and curve of spine worn and shaped to match together and only to the other. Displacement forces some water out of the bath, but neither of them cares so long as there is room for both of them.

Sirius reaches for a flannel and a bar of the soap Lolly’s put out for them – a fresh bar, something suitably feminine and nothing either would have chosen for themselves, but it smells nice enough, and it’s slick and smoothes out the roughness of the terry cloth over the old scars on Remus’ chest and shoulders. His hands curl along Remus’ arms, gently working on the muscles and working out the quiet resignation that has crept into the bones beneath them.

The touches resonate through Remus. Breathing deeply, he reaches behind him to hook an arm around Sirius’ neck as Sirius traces the edge of the flannel along his chest, deliberately dragging it across a nipple, provoking Remus into a hiss. Sirius is pulled down for another kiss, Remus arching his back to reach; there is a shift to make themselves more comfortable, because there’s not enough room in this tub to touch all of this skin, to graze out sounds with fingertips and there’s not enough bloody _room_.

It’s deliriously wonderful, getting lost in him again, feeling something like life for the first time in months from water and porcelain and the slide of liquid skin, eyes closed against the pretty picture they must make but that Remus doesn’t particularly want to see.

Sirius’ hair has gotten wet, now, and it trails along the tops of Remus’ shoulders every time Sirius reaches forward, bringing the flannel along his breastbone, down his sternum, gliding over ribs and where they’ve been broken in the past to his navel, to his waist, where his fingers dip into the hollow of Remus’ right hip and thigh.

Remus cannot feel sensations there, the thick scarring of his infected bite as a child having healed over the damaged nerves, but he can still feel pressure, and the sudden transition of sensation to numbness with the cloth – oh, _oh_. You know me too well, he thinks as Sirius lets the flannel go and takes him in hand, causing Remus to catch a breath between them as he pushes his hips back against the thighs on either side of him.

He’s not hard, though he can feel Sirius’ erection pressing uncomfortably into the tops of his buttocks, and for a moment it doesn’t seem quite fair that Sirius should love him so much and Remus not be able to show that he is loved.

It’s so good, to feel Sirius palming him, taking his bollocks between thumb and forefinger and tugging ever so slightly, ever just – just so, the refrain of “happy birthday, dear Moony” hummed huskily in his ear as Sirius strokes his prick and makes his head throb and his heart burn. But before long, it’s Remus’ cheeks burning because – because he _can’t_ – his body won’t work right, and he knows there is nothing to be done about it that Sirius can do with hands or mouth or cock.

The humming stops, and water splashes over the edge from Remus leaning suddenly forward, exposing his back, nose nearly touching the surface of the water.

“Moony? Are you all right?”

Remus makes a very quiet sound and sits back up, and it is possible to count his vertebrae as they align, like so many spiny mountains set along his ribcage, up to and beneath the thin damp curls of gray covering the pale scars at the top of his neck.

“I’m fine – I’m sorry,” Remus says, reaching down to move Sirius’ hands away. “It’s… I’m sorry, Sirius. It’s not – I still can’t.”

The water makes a fragile sort of noise on the walls of the tub as Sirius shifts his position, cock still pressed against Remus, and suddenly Remus is very ashamed, acutely aware of his body betraying him like this as a final ‘fuck you.’ It’s his birthday, dammit; Merlin knows this is his last one, and all he wants is to spend it making love to Sirius Black in a bathtub.

“S’alright,” says Sirius softly, placing a hand over Remus’, lacing their fingers together in an attempt of comfort that only serves to reinforce the fact that Remus’ hands are thin, his long and delicate fingers now brittle from disease, and they’ve had to charm his ring down a size in the last month.

When Remus doesn’t say anything back except “that’s that, I suppose,” in a voice that sounds too tired considering how early in the evening it is, Sirius frowns and shifts again.

“Love, could you please – budge forward, a little bit; I need to… I’ll be back in just…”

The hand works itself out of his and Sirius braces it instead against the sides of the bathtub, pushing himself up so he can climb out without disturbing Remus.

Remus lets out a breath and sinks down in the water to his neck before he is seized with an emotion that can’t decide if it wants to be anger or frustration, and he decides that it is neither. He reaches a determined arm out of the water and catches Sirius’ calf in his hand before he can step away.

“Don’t,” Remus says, his hoarse voice unnaturally loud in the large room. He quickly adjusts. “Let me do it.”

Sirius stops and regards Remus for a moment as though he’s gone utterly mad, but his expression evens out into something that isn’t quite consent when Remus whispers “ _please,_ Padfoot.”

“No.” The leg slips out of Remus’ grasp as Sirius starts to move towards the door, his frown deepening as his eyes flick to the sinks, trying not to catch sight of his arousal in the mirror. “It’s not fair, Moon. It’s your birthday. I won’t have this be about me.”

“You’re right.”

“Good. We’re on the same page, then. I’ll – give me a minute, and I’ll get back in. I shouldn’t have tried anything; fucking stupid of me, anyway – ”

“You’re right that it’s not fair. Today is my birthday, and all I want is you.”

There is a sigh.

“Moony.”

“Let me touch you.”

“ _Remus._ ”

“For Merlin’s sake, Sirius, don’t be an idiot. Don’t cut me off like this. I can’t enjoy you if you’re off _getting_ off in the bedroom without me. It’s been months, and I… I want to touch you.”

Sirius doesn’t move, but this also means he isn’t moving back towards the bath, either. A thought occurs to Remus, and how terrible of him because he knows it can’t be true, Sirius wouldn’t… but then, a swift, low blow might be what it takes to get what he wants, even though a small part of Remus is afraid to speak on the chance the thought has a seed of truth in it.

“It’s all right,” Remus murmurs, sitting up and scooping the forgotten flannel into his hand, the soap leaving a slick film on his fingers as he absently toys with it. “I understand. You deserve to keep your fantasy, the one where I’m more than a diseased sack of skin and bones and bruises and can walk on my own – the one where I can get it up and fuck you all night – ”

“Don’t you pull that godsdamned _shit_ on me, Remus!” Sirius snarls, turning around to face him, provoked, angry now, easily enough manipulated into anything.

“Prove it,” Remus hisses back, “Prove it – ” and then he can’t speak for the mouth crashing on his, the hand tightly grasping his wrist and wrapping his fingers around a stiff prick and pulling – gods, he could cry, because he’s _right there,_ and Sirius, with his misaimed sense of nobility and fairness, would have rather have tossed off in private than let his partner of over twenty-five years touch him for the first time in months.

The kisses are rough, the odd angle of their new position causing an ache along Remus’ backbone to his elbow; there is a tongue in his mouth and teeth on his lips, and moaning as Sirius starts to thrust into his hand, the head of his cock catching in the circle of Remus’ thumb and forefinger, sliding easily now with soap and precome.

The sight of Sirius half bent over, caught between standing and kneeling, fucking Remus’ hand, damp hair hooked on his ears and falling on their faces, flush from the bath, arms bracing himself – fuck, _fuck_ he can’t breathe with Sirius looking like that, both of them so desperate for each other that they have to resort to rowing over a quick handjob with a dying man on his birthday.

Remus stifles a cry as Sirius climaxes and grits obscenities into his mouth, coming hard over his hand and the clawed foot of the tub before letting go and collapsing to his knees.

Remus closes his eyes as his arm slips back over the side and his body slips down into the bath, and he still can’t _breathe_ because Sirius looks – Sirius…

A pair of hands clasp his shoulders and drag his head back above the water, and Remus supposes that’s why he couldn’t breathe, except what’s the point of having air around if your nose is pressed firmly against someone else’s neck and they’re shaking so terribly, and the guilt is so thick in their voice.

“Fuck, Remus – I’m so fucking sorry, Remus… I – _shit,_ Moony – I shouldn’t have – ”

“I love you,” Remus says hoarsely, “so much.” He brings an arm up around Sirius. “It hurts.”

“I know, Moonymine. I know, and I love you, and I’m sorry. I’ll never – I won’t.”

“I think, perhaps…” and Remus finds he is so very tired, when he thinks about it, “that it might be best if we retire for the night.”

“Yeah… yes.”

*

Three weeks since Remus’ birthday, and the night’s events had not been brought up again between them. Teddy, Sirius knew, had sensed that something private had happened between them, but hadn’t questioned – likely because he knows neither of his parents would answer.

Lolly toddles in from the kitchen carrying a tray laden with several tumblers of potions, setting it in front of Remus at his place before waddling back to finish cooking breakfast.

Remus reaches for the small sugar dish on the table and puts a few spoonfuls into the first glass on the tray, stirring a little to dissolve the crystals before setting the spoon back down. Sirius glances at the potions as Remus empties his glass, mind ghosting over The Thing They Do Not Discuss. He’d managed to deal with the endless medications so far by convincing himself that they were just the normal potions Remus had always taken to manage his pain around fulls, even if it would be smack on first quarter that evening. But there is a quiet sense of apathy surrounding Remus’ actions as he reaches for the second glass, and it disturbs Sirius enough to notice.

“How are you feeling this morning?”

Remus’ smile in response twists into a mild grimace as he quickly drains the second glass – no sugar in this one. “I’m almost hungry.”

“Lolly’s making omelets and fried tomatoes.”

“That sounds delicious.” Remus reaches for the sugar spoon again, and then it occurs to Sirius that this morning’s eggs and tomatoes would only ever _sound_ delicious to Remus, who had stopped eating breakfast most days, and lunches when Lolly wasn’t around to force them on him. “Is Teddy still in bed?”

Sirius decides to ignore this question and ask one of his own. “Aren’t you going to eat anything, Moon?”

“I’ll have the extras in a sandwich later.”

“Remus.”

“Yes?”

“You need to eat something.”

“Have some coffee, love.”

“ _Remus._ ”

“I’m not hungry, Sirius. I haven’t been hungry for breakfast in two years… makes me nauseous, and besides, you know I haven’t the appetite anyway. Today’s no different. Blame number three, here, for that.” Remus picks up the third glass and takes a sip, the liquid clear and tasteless.

Sirius pours himself a mug of coffee and takes the sugar spoon from Remus to help himself as Lolly sets a hot plate with that morning’s breakfast in front of him, and a small saucer of pills in front of Remus. The pills make a small tinkling sound against the china as they roll around on the saucer, at least a dozen of them, and Sirius casts a maudlin look into his coffee as he mentally catalogues the purpose of each one.

_Joint pain, muscle pain, nausea, blood thickener, migraines, bone supplements, bowel regulation, more pain medicine… and we’re running low of the–_

“Sirius?”

The voice cuts through his checklist, and as Sirius looks up as he begins to marvel at how Remus can deal with the side effects, though he knows Remus would be in far worse shape without the medication.

“It’s just eggs and tomatoes. There’s no need to look as if I’ve strangled your owl.”

Sirius mutters an apology to his coffee and tries to look out the window, tries not to think about The Thing They Do Not Discuss, but it’s impossible this morning with the sounds the pills make against the saucer as Remus buys another day with every swallow.

They go on in silence for several minutes. Remus crosses and uncrosses his legs while Sirius taps the end of the sugar spoon against the table in a slow, dull pattern, still blinking into his mug. Then Remus suddenly reaches over and plucks the spoon out of Sirius’ hand, rapping it sharply on the table.

“Look, we both know that I'm probably not going to make it to Christmas, and I don't want to spend the mornings I have left with you having you stare at your coffee like it's just told you your left bollock's been cut off.”

This gets Sirius’ attention.

_“What?”_

“You heard me. I said it.”

His mind is as blank as his stare, completely nonplussed by the fact that Remus Discussed It.

“Remus, no. Not this morning. Not now –”

“Then when? We've ignored it for years. We've known for _decades_ that this was going to happen, and that it was going to happen about now. I’m… there’s going to be a full very soon that I won’t recover from, that I can’t recover from, because my body just can’t take –”

“Don’t, Moony; don’t you dare talk like that –” Sirius pushes back his chair and rises as Remus lets out a laugh, cutting him off.

“Don’t talk? We talk to Healers, we talk to _doctors_ for all the good it does us, but we never talk to _each other_ about this. You pretend like everything’s fine, but the truth is that I’ve got a wheelchair on backorder from a Muggle supplier, and I can’t even _taste_ the omelet properly anymore, so it doesn’t matter if I eat –”

“IT MATTERS TO ME, DAMMIT!” Sirius roars, fist slamming hard on the table, the force upturning the remaining tumbler of potion and his coffee mug. Remus flinches but remains otherwise steady, folding his hands in his lap. Swallowing hard, Sirius watches the coffee spread over the tablecloth. Neither of them move to clean it up. “I can’t,” he whispers, finally.

“You can’t what?” Remus asks, expression hard. “You can’t have me die? Right; try that one on someone who hasn’t lost you twice.”

“That’s not fair, Remus. That’s hardly the same –”

“No, you’re right. Of course it isn’t. This isn’t the same, because you’ve had years of prior warning. You know what’s coming, and you can deal with it, like I am.”

Sirius suddenly goes very quiet, his hand uncurling. He can’t look at anything except the coffee stain and the spilled potion in the tray. “It’s not the same, because you won’t come back,” he says. He blinks and his chest begins to ache, and now that the words are out there he has to get out – he can’t do this now. He can’t do this _ever._

“I have to go. To… work, the Ministry. I have to go.”

Remus doesn’t say anything except “of course, darling,” and Sirius, in his haste to get to the Floo, forgets to wake Teddy for breakfast on his way.

*

Being one of the last remaining Blacks, Sirius had inherited his family seat on the Wizengamot and assumed it at Remus’ encouragement some years prior. They hardly needed the money that came from the work the Ministry gave, but it was a way to get Sirius out of the house, and he used his influence to help sway legislation that might help Remus and other werewolves regain more rights and status.

Last week’s files sit still untouched on his desk when Sirius arrives through the Floo, now covered with a fine dusting of soot as he brushes off his hastily-fastened outer robes with his hand.

There is a note tacked to his chair from Hermione Weasley, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Subdivision for the Prosecution of Elvish Wrongdoing (S.P.E.W. even in bureaucracy), reminding him that the current legislation on Sock Release from Indentured Servitude was due to pass through the Creature Control Board on Wednesday and would he please arrive twenty minutes early to discuss –

– at which point Sirius stops reading and drops it to his desk.

He has hardly had time to Summon himself a fresh cup of coffee before his secretary, a heavyset brunette with butterbeer-bottle glasses and a name that was either Moravia or Eileen, bustles through the door and deposits the stack of mail that had accumulated over the weekend.

Interdepartmental memos, extradepartmental memos, weekend edition of the Prophet, a few bills up for revision, correspondence with corporate big-shots to help with backing finances… none of this sounds particularly appealing, and Sirius knows that what he really needs – after he finishes his coffee – is to distract himself from that morning’s argument.

Memos are not distracting enough for Sirius Black.

“Eil—Moravia, love, d’you have the list of Floo calls for me from this weekend to return?”

His secretary plucks a list out from under Hermione’s note and dangles it in front of him.

The list, like the rest of his mail, is unsurprising, and Sirius is about to turn in before the day has even started to go have a proper sulk in the park as Padfoot, but a name he hadn’t been expecting to see catches his eye, and he pauses to read the note scrawled beside it.

_Prof Neville Longbottom, Sunday, 9:34 am **V Import Confidentl Pls return ASAP**_

He gives brief instructions to his secretary that he is not to be disturbed while he does his round of calls, and she excuses herself with a swing of her hips.

*

As soon as his conversation with Neville ends, Sirius pulls his head from the fireplace just long enough to break the connection and grab another fistful of Floo powder before shoving his face back in, calling out for the Potter’s, Godric’s Hollow, main parlor.

“Harry? Hello? Ah – Harry, there you are – look, you’ve got to come through to my office. I've got to speak with you.”

His godson’s expression turns to concern as he kneels before the fire.

“Why? Is everything all right? Has something happened?”

“Things are fine, more than fine, but I can’t tell you here. Come through; tell Ginny you’ll be a bit.”

Harry nods and calls something over his shoulder that Sirius doesn’t catch as again he breaks the connection, standing up and stepping back from the fireplace as Harry stumbles across the hearth.

“What’s all this about, Sirius?” asks Harry, watching him start to prowl the edges of the small room.

“On your word, nothing I am about to say leaves this office.”

Harry quickly straightens up and nods. “Of course.”

“I’ve just finished speaking with Neville Longbottom. Apparently, he’s been helping to head up a private research group with some Potions brewers; they’re based at Hogwarts because of the facilities there. There’s some plant in the greenhouses that – anyway, that’s not the point.” Sirius stops pacing and comes to rest behind his chair, eyes cast reverently down. “There’s – they’ve got a cure.”

It is a few moments before the statement sinks in and recognition of its implications plasters itself across Harry’s face.

“That’s… you’re joking, Sirius. I mean, just… _wow._ ”

Sirius looks up, his voice hinged with hope. “It’s true. It’s been in development for two years, and the research group has kept very, very quiet about it. They've done limited subject testing, and it works. It really _works._ ” Sirius stops, swallowing, and realizes he is holding back tears, the relief of the thought threatening to overcome him entirely. “My Remus, my Moony… Harry,” he cracks, “he’ll be free.”

Letting out a breath, Harry moves closer to his godfather, placing a hand on his shoulder and smiling. “That’s incredible. What’s it involve, exactly?”

“It’s a potion taken in six doses over three months, once on each new and full moon. Remus can keep on the Wolfsbane, but I’m told it’s something of an ordeal to go through. Neville said that one of the members of the research team compared it to the Muggle practice of ‘chemotherapy,’ but I’ll admit to having no idea what that is. The potion, you see, it – well. It literally kills the wolf.”

Harry frowns at this. “Is it safe? I mean, for the newly bitten, certainly. But Remus has been living with this nearly his entire life, and he’s not, ah, exactly in the dawn of youth, or anything.”

Letting out a deep sigh, Sirius turns away from his godson and sits in his desk chair, looking very hard at Hermione’s memo. “They haven’t tested it on quite as broad a spectrum as I would have liked. Neville approached me because Remus is a candidate to further the testing before any official announcements are made. But Harry, without it –” Sirius drops his gaze to his hands, his hands to his lap, and his voice to a whisper, “– without it, he hasn’t got much time. He hides it – _tries_ to hide it from Teddy – but Remus, he’s… he’s failing. He’s got a few months left, and I’ve got forty or fifty years ahead of me.”

“Werewolves don’t generally live past their fifties, no,” says Harry quietly, reaching up to scratch his ear, looking rather torn between comforting Sirius and trying to redirect the conversation back to the happier news of the cure.

“He’s fifty-six, Harry.” A log snaps and hits the fireplace grate; Sirius finally raises his head and looks at Harry in earnest. “He has to take it.”

“I’m sure he will, Sirius.”

“You don’t know Remus like I do. He’ll have about a hundred reasons why not.”

“Being alive’s a good reason.”

“I hope to make it my selling point.”

*

“That’s it?” Sirius blinks at Remus, incredulous. “You’re shitting me.”

“There’s no need to be vulgar, Sirius.”

“There’s a bloody cure, and all you have to say is ‘I’m not interested.’”

Remus lets out a sigh and sets down his teacup. “I’m not going to just launch myself headlong into this. We’ve looked at things like this before, and I won’t stand for seeing you get your hopes up and then dashed again. It’s not fair to either of us, when it’s painfully clear to me that, at this point, a cure is just a fantasy.”

“Remus, have you even looked at this proposal? There’s documented evidence, there’s research – the method is brilliant – ”

“I’ve heard your proposal, but the particulars don’t really matter to me." He reaches for the sugar spoon, ignoring Sirius’ scrawled notes from his earlier conversation with Neville, but Sirius extends a hand to stop him.

“The particulars?”

“How the cure works. It doesn’t matter to me, because I’m not going to do it.”

“Just like that, Remus? You’re just going to dismiss this offhand?”

Remus withdraws his hand, leaning back in his chair. “Sirius, I… I can’t have this not work. Not again. I won’t go through another treatment, another visit to some foreign country where they shove silver down my throat and ‘thank God’ I’ve been saved. I lost my childhood to hospitals and witch doctors; I won’t lose the last months of my remaining adulthood to –”

“It’s not some bloody witch doctor! It’s Neville Longbottom! I’ve told you, they’ve tested it –”

“On the newly turned, some thirty years younger and twenty years less accepting of what happens to them –”

“What _won’t_ happen to them, because they’re human again!”

Remus pushes his chair back from the table in frustration, running a hand through his hair and groping for his cane. “Listen to me. It may have worked for them, but I’m done, Sirius. I’m dying, if not only still alive by some miracle of nature and medication. It doesn’t matter what the evidence shows or doesn’t show. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to do it.”

“It does matter, Remus,” Sirius says. “Do you honestly think I would have come to you crowing about some cure if I didn’t know that it worked? I know what you went through, Remus. We’ve been through enough together.”

“If I were younger, Sirius, perhaps I’d consider it. But I simply don’t have the… the time, anymore, to give to this foolishness.” He looks at Sirius, gripping the end of his cane more tightly. “ _We_ don’t have the time to waste on this, love.”

Sirius’ face twists darkly into a hardened expression, and he folds his arms across his chest, levelly meeting Remus’ gaze. “Besides having a few years on them, exactly how is your lycanthropy different from theirs?" he asks. "This is _magic,_ Remus, not whatever nonsense the Muggles get up to. If the cure has worked on the other werewolves, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work on you.”

"My lycanthropy is different than theirs in the fact that it’s been affecting my body for much longer. Older curses are harder to break – you know this; don’t act like you don’t. There’s no guarantee that a curse over fifty years old will break so easily with a simple potion.”

“Well, someone had better tell Bill Weasley he’s out of a job, then.”

“Be reasonable, Sirius.”

“I _am_ being reasonable! You’re the one dismissing this without so much as a shifty at the research! If anyone’s behaving unreasonably, it’s you!”

Remus sets his jaw.

“Hand me the papers.”

Sirius pushes the papers across the table towards Remus, shoulders tense and body wound tight. “Look here, Remus. It’s worked in one hundred percent of the cases.”

“What, of the six patients it’s been tried on?”

“One hundred percent! I know it’s not much, but Neville wouldn’t have come to us if he didn’t think it would work, and it is still in the experimental stages. Six cases are better than the rest of the ‘cures’ – none.”

The room falls silent for a few moments as Remus scans the notes, taking in the brief information. A potion, in six doses… each new and each full moon… kills the wolf, leaving the human behind… still experimental…

“It’ll work this time, Moony.”

Remus’ voice is wrung thin when he speaks, hoarse. “And if it doesn’t work this time, Padfoot? Then what happens to me?”

Sirius softens, his hard expression cracking, suddenly vulnerable. “Remus, you know I hate talking about this, but… love, we have to try something. Time is against us.”

“And I want to enjoy that time, Sirius. I don’t want to waste it on something that will just make everything that much harder.”

“You can’t know that, Moony. It’s only three months.”

“Three months may not seem like a lot to you, but to someone who has only a few more than that left… Look, Sirius, it's taken me years to come to terms with this, and I have. Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean that this cure is going to change things for me. It doesn’t matter –”

The softness disappears in a sharp crack as Sirius snaps.

“Doesn’t matter? Well, fuck you, Remus! Fuck you and your ‘doesn’t matter!’” Sirius’ voice begins a steady rise. “Come to terms – my arse! Some bloody Gryffindor you turned out to be, you coward! Gods, look at you, just sitting there, all ready to go on to the great beyond. Well, fuck you!”

Remus Lupin is not going to have this conversation twice in one day.

“Lower your voice," he says steadily, trying to maintain himself. "Teddy’s in the sitting room.”

“I bloody well will not lower my fucking voice! And I’ll tell you this much, Remus – Teddy won’t be losing only one father this year, you little martyr.”

Remus’ blood runs starkly cold as the words cut into his chest like wires pulled taut, and the part of his brain that had always impressed civility and manners into him is the only thing not shocked enough by them to form words of his own.

“Lower your voice,” he says again, and, less sure, “please.”

“I won’t do it, Remus. I refuse.” Remus knows but won’t admit that Sirius isn’t talking about normal decibel levels. “I won’t face the next fifty years without you. My life has been too full of pain as it is, and this… I can’t, Moony, I just can’t.”

Sirius looks at him, face set, even. “So don’t you think for one bloody minute that you are the only one to contemplate their death, because until today, I knew _exactly_ when mine was coming.”

Remus takes a long breath, quiet as Sirius watches him. There is a difference, he thinks, between knowing something to be true and having it told to you by someone else. Somewhere, he’d always privately known Sirius had felt this way about the situation, but to hear him say it, use it against him like this… he wants to laugh at how the tables have turned.

“I know it won’t be easy," Sirius says, "but I promise you, I won’t leave your side for a minute.” His voice is edged with desperation. “Please, love. Please… don’t leave me, Moonymine.”

“Death…” Remus looks at the table in front of him; can’t look at Sirius. “Death is a less frightening prospect than uncertainty, love.”

Sirius rises and crosses over to Remus, sinking to his knees in front of him, taking his cane from his hands and carefully laying it down beside him on the floor.

“You’ve got a chance,” he whispers, taking up Remus’ hands, “a real chance.”

“We don’t know anything for sure, Sirius. Teddy is grown. He’s six months out of school, and the only reason he’s still living here is because he understands, unlike you, that I’ll be gone in another six. He doesn’t need me anymore.”

“If you won’t do it for yourself, Remus, and you won’t do it for our son,” Sirius says, “then for gods’ sake, do it for me.” He reaches up and touches Remus’ cheek, forcing Remus to finally look at him. “After all, what good am I without you?”

When Remus doesn’t respond, a deep frown etches itself onto Sirius’ face, and he slips into and away as Padfoot, grim.

*

It is past eleven when Remus finally comes to bed. Lolly had been kind enough to lay out a fresh set of pyjamas for him, and he brushes his teeth and relieves himself before undressing.

The bedclothes on his side are turned down; Sirius, himself again, is lying on his stomach, face turned towards Remus on his pillow, asleep or appearing to be, though Remus knows better.

He carefully climbs in and finds himself comfortable on his back, eyes open in the darkness and upturned towards the ceiling. Sirius makes a sort of snuffling sound and shifts himself over. Settling an arm across Remus’ waist, he tucks his head under Remus’ chin, resting his cheek on the nook of Remus’ chest and underarm, careful to keep the rest of his body off to the side.

One of Remus’ hands slips around Sirius’ back to hold him while the other finds its way to Sirius’ hair. He strokes it absently, feeling Sirius’ weight against him, the solid presence a comfort. Minutes pass, an hour. They lie there, the rhythmic movement of Remus’ fingers threading through Sirius’ thick hair marking the seconds as the moon moves outside beyond the curtains.

“I’ll do it,” he whispers, hardly more than consonants on an exhale. There had never really been a choice. Not his, anyway.

Sirius doesn’t move, and Remus wonders if he _has_ drifted off, but after a moment there is a pair of lips on the edge of his collarbone, the soft press of kisses to skin punctuated by relieved, staccato breaths. _Thank you, thank you, Moonymine._

Remus stares at the ceiling and tries to sleep.

*

Lolly had finished packing Teddy’s bag at two in the afternoon the day of the new moon, but Remus had watched him wrangle excuses together to stay in the house until well past six.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night then, yeah?” Teddy asks, reluctantly slinging the strap over his shoulder, refusing yet to edge towards the fireplace – and thus the Potter’s.

Sirius reaches him first, straightening the bag as it hangs. “We’ll send an owl for you around seven.”

“I’ll be fine, love,” Remus says, shifting his weight heavily onto his cane as he reaches out to straighten Teddy’s collar. Teddy ignores the effort, drawing his Da into a loose hug instead. For a moment, Remus feels as if Teddy is only eight of his eighteen years, and why does he suddenly feel himself so very _old?_

It is Sirius who finally pushes the tin of Floo powder into Teddy’s hands and spins him around, trying for an air of annoyance ("go on now, we’re on a timetable, son; haven’t got all evening to stand around"), but betrayed by the particular crease in his brow and way he shoves anxious fingers into his pocket.

*

The two of them sit on the edge of their bed, watching as the sun sinks and finding no moon crawling behind it. New moons usually brought with them quiet nights, but they both know there will be no more peace for at least the next three months.

The potion Remus is to take looks alarmingly unexceptional and, in fact, quite familiar; the faint smoke spilling lazily over the sides of the goblet might fool him into believing it is simply the Wolfsbane he takes regularly. The smell, however, is different enough – acrid, sharply metallic.

“Cheers,” Remus says, and picks the goblet up from the bedside table, deciding the best way to go about this is just to get it down in one long pull –

“Bloody fuck, Moony!” Sirius’ hand closing swiftly over his mouth is the only thing that keeps Remus from immediately vomiting the potion back up; he can feel the blue-hot burn of dissolved silver down the back of his throat, the amaryllis bulbs in the pit of his gut, the aconite blooming through his veins – the mercury shooting his temperature up, up…

Remus grips Sirius’ wrist and wrenches his arm away, coughing violently. He doesn’t remember the room turning sideways and then realizes it’s _him_ that has, his cheek pressed to the quilt, his hands clutching at whatever fabric they crush first into to ground him, knuckles white and the curtains whiter, and there’s no moonlight at all; who the fuck decided that they would do this when there’s no moonlight to serve as a _release?_

He’s trapped in his own head and his blood is boiling so hot it’s sterilizing his insides, he’s sure of it. Sirius sets Cooling charms and starts stripping his clothing, yelling over the coughing for Lolly to bring water, wet towels, bring them _now,_ we need them _now_ –

Remus doesn’t know how much time has passed since he dropped the still-smoking goblet on the floor, but loses all measure of it as he slips in and out of delirium, his human side cutting through the thick bubbles of sopohorous juice in his brain only to be pelted down again by the peach pits banging in his eardrums.

Sometime between the armadillo bile flooding his liver and his own bile being crudely wiped off his chin, Remus is pulled upright, one of Sirius’ arms looped snugly around him to hold him back against his chest. Sirius threads one hand through Remus’ sweat-dampened hair, brushing it away from his face and trying to keep Remus’ neck from rolling as he shakes, Remus' body thrumming with shivers as it protests the wolf’s aggravation, winding him tighter as white cedar roots choke his lungs. He can’t keep this up indefinitely. His sweat reeks of death; the wolf twists howling through his nervous system in an attempt to escape the toxins in his blood.

Resistance breaks as the sun breaks the horizon, release finally given as sunlight begins to fill the room and shunts the wolf aside. An exhausted kiss to his temple does nothing to stop the beads of sweat trailing down his unclenched jaw.

*

If his parents had thought for one moment that Teddy would go placidly over to the Potter’s while his Da took the first dose of the treatment, he would have laughed in their faces. Teddy Lupin-Black is the son of two Marauders (and of a mother just as stubborn), and for gods’ sake, he isn’t four years old anymore. He had read the report and research on the treatment just the same as they had, knew what it would do, knew he couldn’t leave them – couldn’t leave Da, who had taught him, if nothing else, that love is the thing that holds a family together, and what is love if it isn’t staying with him through this, even if they didn’t know?

Granted, Teddy had reasoned, the main reason they wouldn’t know is because Papa would likely kill him for disobeying if he did, so. And this was hardly like a full, and Lolly knows – about the love thing. She had pretended to activate the Floo and told the Potters that Teddy was staying with the Weasleys instead… as she charms water ice cold, she covers for him.

Teddy is hunkered down against the wall in the corridor opposite his parents’ bedroom door, his head in his hands, his hands on his knees, his knees drawn to his chest. It’s past four in the morning now, and one end of an Extendable Ear is looped through his fingers, the other run as close to the door as Teddy dares. He’d seen enough already, from when Lolly had opened the door to bring in the towels Papa had called for, and a part of him doesn’t want to listen anymore, but he’s here and he’s grown-up and he _has_ to.

Da is still coughing; he screams, and a glass of water is heard being knocked off the bedside table. Papa says something, and Teddy doesn’t hear the words so much as the tone, tired and pleading and soothing and raw as Da swallows air and heaves another sob because he’s in too much pain to cry – they’re all in too much pain to cry, but Teddy does, anyway.

Lolly touches his shoulder kindly and hands him a towel, regret in her tiny voice as she reminds Master Teddy that he must be Flooing out when sunrise is being here.

*

Lolly is there on Saturday when Master Remus’ wheelchair is finally delivered and makes her way with it to the library as per her instructions. The door is ajar, and she sees Masters Sirius and Remus sitting in their chairs, enjoying the other’s company in the early afternoon before young Master Teddy returns home for the evening. She doesn’t enter right away; she hears laughter –they’re _laughing_ – and waits for a break in the conversation rather than interrupting. How many weeks had it been since she’d last seen them easy and happy like this?

“…and then the bartender said – you remember, Moony,” Sirius says between gasps, “He said, ‘I don’t know about you – ”

“ – but my kneazle’s green with envy!’” Remus finishes for him, his hoarse chuckle warm in the room.

Sirius runs a hand through his hair, grinning, and takes a sip of his beer. “Gods, Harry was red for hours, but Ginny was brassed for _weeks._ She nearly chucked him right there; I still say she missed a brilliant opportunity to do so.”

“Love, if I’d have taken all of my ‘brilliant opportunities’ to chuck you, you’d find yourself perpetually face down in the street behind the Leaky.”

“Ah, but you see, I rest peacefully at night knowing you’d never chuck me; I give fantastic head.”

Remus’ smile quirks down a bit funny in the corners, but he bats his eyes demurely. “I knew there had to be a reason I’ve kept the stray around.”

“Rather,” says Sirius smugly, leaning back in his armchair.

Lolly quickly decides that is quite enough of _that_ (she’ll be damned if she hasn’t walked in on enough proof of Master Sirius’ assertion over the decades) and barges forward, pushing the door open with the wheelchair.

“Lolly is bringing Master Remus’ wheelchair for him from delivery, sirs,” she says in a tone usually reserved for their son and his dates. The laughter wilts on its stem; Sirius’ smugness buds into feigned indifference. It is Remus who thanks her as she makes her way across the library and deposits the wheelchair next to him before quietly slipping out of sight between bookshelves, conjuring herself a feather duster.

Lolly watches from between the dusty shelves as Sirius extends a hand and grips Remus’ arm to steady him as he lowers himself into the seat, appearing for all intents actively involved in the transition from cane to chair. But his gaze is focused instead on a spot on the floor directly under the second bookshelf from the left, and there is an acute tightness in his shoulders that Lolly recognizes as resistance. Remus, however, looks all right, relief evident along his spine as he leans forward and adjusts the footrests to accommodate him better.

“Well, she’s no Black Bitch, that’s for sure,” Sirius remarks after a moment, sitting down in his chair again. He takes a long draft of his beer and begins to examine the label.

A smile grows again on Remus’ face, and he disengages the brakes to push himself closer, positioning his chair next to Sirius’. “Hardly in the same league as your motorbike, true,” he agrees, “but still a good set of wheels.” Sirius nods and continues to read down the ingredients list, but all of them know it’s futile – the print’s too damn small.

“You don’t need it,” Sirius says suddenly, finally shifting his gaze over to Remus.

“No; you don’t want me to need it.”

Lolly gives a sigh that passes unnoticed. There they go, she thinks.

“Remus, if you need it, then it means that you’re not getting better.”

“I’ve needed it since before we started the treatment, Sirius.”

“You’ve been using your cane just fine since we started everything.”

“I’ve only had two of the six doses and I’ve been using my cane to stand myself up as I Apparate from room to room.”

Sirius presses his lips together and sets his beer down on the low table in front of him, hands curling tightly around the ends of the armrests, apparently unable to come up with anything better than “well, that’s been working so far, hasn’t it?” – which he does not say, though it is evident on his face as he turns his head to look out the window.

For a while, neither of them move nor speak, the only sound in the room that of Lolly as she shuffles over to start on the next row of shelves. Then Remus silently reaches out, resting a hand lightly on top of Sirius’. Their eyes meet; Sirius twines their fingers together and says something too quiet for Lolly to hear.

“I know,” says Remus in response.

“I never said it enough, when we were younger. I feel like I’ve got to say it all the time to make up for it.”

“Padfoot, I’ve always known that you loved me; ever since we were boys. What sort of love it was changed as we have, but it’s always been a constant, and I’ve always known.”

“I didn’t always know.” Sirius runs the fingers of his other hand over the back of Remus’, tracing the raised blue veins, following the sharp relief of the tendons. “I’d never fancied myself in love, before you. At school, I used to think, you know, if being in love made a body act like James did, if it was all just flowers and hearts and Snitches with initials in them in the corner of every essay, then what a _daft_ thing to waste your time on, love was. I didn't have to love someone to want to shag them - and they didn't have to love me back. To me, everything was simpler, easier that way.” He frowns, voice lowering a shade. “There’s something I’ve never told you, Moony.”

Remus looks at him and makes a small, inquisitive sound. Hidden behind the bookshelves, her presence entirely forgotten, Lolly has long since stopped dusting and simply watches the Masters.

“When I knew – when I realized that I loved you – it’s one of the few things I remember clearly about my life before Azkaban. The Dementors took so much, but like other things, this memory wasn’t happy, and I’ve…” Sirius trails off, seeming to gather his thoughts, refocus.

“There was a Death Eater raid in Chelsea, after we left school, the first time we’d been able to go fight,” he starts again, his fingers sliding down to touch the bones in Remus’ wrist, eyes dropping to follow their path. “It was on the night of a full, and Moody had called for backup. None of us wanted to leave you alone, but you said you’d be fine, and so we went.”

“I remember,” says Remus, gently prompting him. “James and Peter told me afterward that things went all right, that –”

“No, Moony.” Sirius flicks a look at Remus. “We lied to you about what happened during the raid.”

“I don’t understand.” Remus’ expression begins to cloud over in slight confusion; the wheelchair creaks as he sits further back in it.

“We hadn’t wanted to worry you, at the time – _I_ hadn’t wanted to worry you,” Sirius continues, letting out a long breath, distant. “I got hit with – something, some curse, on my thigh – and I started bleeding, bad. The masked bastard who’d attacked me had also gotten a body-bind in, so I couldn’t point my wand to cauterize my leg, or call for help, or anything. If James hadn’t tripped over me a few minutes later, I’d have almost certainly bled out.” He stops momentarily; takes another breath.

“I’d gone down next to a window, and I saw the moon, and I – all I could think was that if I couldn’t stop my bleeding, who would be there to stop yours? You hadn’t transformed alone in years, and we knew how bad it could get… I didn’t care what happened to me, then, I just – the thought of something happening to you that I could have stopped, that you might have died – and if I’d just _stayed_ with you –” The fingers on Remus’ wrist tense and guilt creeps into Sirius’s words as he begins to rush through them, a fragile strand of fear holding the sentences together as he begins to crumble.

“And the next time I left you alone, I went to fight again, but – it was _James,_ Remus – and Lily, and I couldn’t just… and then it was _Harry,_ and now… now, the one time you need me, the one time I can finally stay… seeing you in that damned chair, it… I feel so helpless, Moony; I feel so… I love you, and you’re slipping through my fingers –”

As Remus leans forward and kisses his mouth, Sirius closes his eyes and quietly begins to cry. Lolly looks away, bowing her head.

*

Had Sirius known upon its delivery that the wheelchair would be a temporary fixture, in use for only a month – two more rounds of the treatment – he would have insisted that Remus not bother with it at all, privately glad for the excuse not to see him in it. However, had he known that the reason for the quick retirement is because Remus would be so weak after the second full moon transformation as to be bedridden, he would have pushed to order it sooner – and damned be what he felt when he looked at it.

Sirius would never admit to feeling guilty about pressing the treatment on Remus – he needs it too badly, needs it to _work_ too badly – but as the weeks pass and Remus’s health continues on its rapid decline, worrying tendrils of doubt and apprehension begin to twist around the edges of his thoughts.

Members of the research team had assured him this was normal, that like a fever, Remus would get far worse before he got better, and naturally, the process would be more difficult from the outset because of his age and how long he’d been living with the curse. Each checkup the day after a new or full moon felt like a sham; there was no way to know if the treatment would actually work until it _had,_ and any ill effects in the meantime would simply have to be accommodated as necessary. There was also no way to know if Remus’ failing health was a direct result of the cure, or if it would have proceeded naturally through its course this way.

Though he might not admit to guilt, Sirius would admit to fear. The second and third new moons had come and gone much the same as the first, with violent coughing and convulsions, a searing temperature causing terrifying seizures of lucidity in otherwise delirium – not to mention whatever else was happening to Remus internally that Sirius could only imagine.

But for as wretched and debilitating as the new moons had been, the full moons, in their own way, had been worse. Staying on the Wolfsbane had allowed Remus to keep his mind, letting him feel everything in excruciating sharpness, and the extra amount of aconite in his bloodstream had given an additional boost to the effects of the treatment. Tonight is the last night, the last full, the last round. If it works, the wolf will die, leaving Remus behind – human. If it doesn’t…

Sirius closes the bedroom door behind him as he enters. Toeing off his shoes, he doesn’t know how he’ll be able to give Remus the goblet.

*

They don’t talk much – don’t need to, finding words unnecessary in their silent language of soft touches and lingering kisses and gentle breaths that carry with them a greater message than murmured consonants ever would. Had they been younger – when they _had_ been younger – the silence would have stood in place of words and secrets necessary for them to hold on to in order to hold on to each other. Now, however, everything is said, laid out between them over decades of a life stitched together, and Remus is just so tired that most of the day is spent dozing.

A sense of finality is heavy in the room; shortly before sunset, it grows so thickly oppressive that Sirius excuses himself for a cigarette and smokes three, returning twenty minutes later to find that Remus has fallen asleep again. His body looks so frail under the blankets, sharp-angled shoulders, drawn cheekbones and thin wrists on the pillow, chest that bears the weight of breathing like a cross. He hadn’t always looked like this, had been healthy – though bruised and scarred, only part-time – had been handsome and mischievous, with sandy-brown hair that curled at the ends when it got too long, which it often did. Sirius remembers a time when he couldn’t see his Moony’s ribs when they made love, when his hips had been smooth, not hard, pointed peaks of bone. The color in his cheeks now comes only from the light creeping through the window, fading.

“C’mon. Wake up, you. It’s time.” Sirius turns down the covers as Lolly steps in with the potion.

*

The transformation from man to beast is, as it is always, marked by wretched screaming forced out of lungs too weak to be concerned with proper anguish anymore. Padfoot tries not to watch as Remus’ face lengthens, his spine twisting, limbs jerking as they are stretched to a point unimaginable and then broken, knees folding backwards with a swift crack as his hands curl in on themselves to form paws, and fur pushes its way through his skin like so many tiny needles sewing the wolf-form finally together.

Moony crumples at the foot of the bed with a whine that catches on the edges, high-pitched and sour, shivering.

This last time, the wolf doesn’t resist the potion, just stays where he is. Sirius knows that Remus is at the front, and is glad for the fact that his emotions are simpler as Padfoot. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to stay in the same room otherwise.

Moony’s eyes close and he tucks his muzzle under a paw, his tail flicking absently. Padfoot curls around him, their sides pressed close. The moon hangs heavy and solemn in the sky, the light pooling on the carpet slowly beginning to drown them.

Night trudges on, and near morning, Moony’s whimpers become less and less frequent, breathing slow and labored; the muscles in his face slacken, and Padfoot notices only when they don’t tense again from the pain.

Padfoot gives a low whine and nudges Moony’s neck with his nose; there is no immediate response, so he nips a little to get the werewolf’s attention.

It is then Padfoot realizes that Moony isn’t breathing.

Panic slams through him and Sirius slips back into himself, the dangers of being human around a werewolf be damned - Remus isn’t breathing, and the moon hasn’t set yet – the wolf isn’t moving.

“Remus, love? C’mon, Remus… Moony. Moony, come on – ”

Thoughts race and tumble through Sirius’ mind like boiling water over stones: how long until sunrise, how many minutes has it been, oh gods, how long’s he been without breathing, Moony, Moony, why aren’t you breathing, Remus, where’s my fucking wand, Ennervate, oh gods, fucking hell, why won’t Ennervate work, Ennervate, please, pleaseplease Moony, how many minutes has it been, how many _godsdamned minutes_ has it been – –

…how many minutes…

…how…

The moon sets ten minutes later, taking the wolf with it.

For a man who learned patience in Azkaban, they are the longest ten minutes of Sirius’ life.

He’s always thought it like watching a film reel played backwards, the shift back from beast to man, and when it is over, Remus lies naked and still, unmoving, unbreathing, wholly human, wholly mortal.

“No.” Sirius’ voice cracks as the room closes in on him and he gathers up Remus’ body, cradling his head against his shoulder. He can’t hear anything except his own heartbeat rushing through his ears, the hush in the room like death, and so it is – it can’t be –

“No,” he whispers again, pressing trembling kisses to the crown of Remus’ head, “my Remus, Moonymine, Moonymine,” like a chant, kissing his eyes, “Moonymoonymoonymine.”

And then Remus’ eyes open under Sirius’ lips, and suddenly they both can breathe again.

It’s dawn, and Remus mumbles something about his wand, because honestly, it’s not even half six yet, and that damned fucking bird is terribly loud, and fifty more years of bloody wrens every morning was hardly worth it.

Sirius can’t help but laugh, and together they laugh until they cry, as only humans can do, smiling.


End file.
